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The industry group that represents major television networks is calling on the nonprofit Media Rating Council to strip Nielsen’s accreditation in an unprecedented escalation of a months-long feud centered on the accuracy of Nielsen ratings.
On Wednesday morning, the Video Advertising Bureau, which counts A+E Networks, Disney, Fox, NBCUniversal and ViacomCBS (among others) as members, delivered a letter to the MRC demanding that it suspend its accreditation of Nielsen’s national ratings service due to the measurement firm’s handling of its in-home panel. That panel, which serves as the backbone of Nielsen’s television measurement products, has been cast into doubt since at least March 2020.
In the letter, Sean Cunningham, the VAB’s president and CEO, asked that the MRC suspend Nielsen accreditation “as quickly as possible.” The MRC, which serves as a third-party watchdog that reviews and accredits various forms of media audience measurement, sets minimum standards that companies must meet to be accredited media research ratings services. Nielsen, Cunningham charged, had repeatedly violated those standards.
“I believe the compounded failures by Nielsen in not preserving the integrity of their national panel is continuing to damage their largest clients and the TV Video buy/sell marketplace as a whole—and thus requires the MRC intervention of suspending accreditation of Nielsen’s national rating service ASAP,” Cunningham wrote.
The letter was accompanied by a 10-page document detailing the supposed shortcomings that the VAB and Nielsen have been butting heads over for months after the VAB accused Nielsen of “systemically under-counting” television viewership from March 2020 through March 2021. In May, Nielsen admitted that it had lowballed television viewership due to complications in maintaining its panel over the course of the pandemic after the MRC confirmed the same findings.
Nielsen said at the time that it was committed to rectifying its panel make-up to address the findings, but Cunningham says that the measurement firm has still not made the necessary corrections to its panel and failed to adequately communicate the extent of the problem with members.
‘All is not well’
“There is a narrative in the marketplace that all is well,” Cunningham told Adweek Wednesday morning. “All is not well.”
At the center of the issue is Nielsen’s in-home panel, which is made up of households around the country who agree to have their household viewing habits monitored. During the pandemic, the company had to press pause on in-home maintenance visits, which check to make sure monitoring equipment is working properly and that people are actually occupying their homes, due to Covid-19 restrictions; those limitations, the VAB has previously charged, led to an undercount and an underrepresentation of Black and Hispanic households in particular.
Nielsen has taken steps this year to shore up its in-home panel and improve its relationship with its networks’ clients since the controversy spilled into public view in April, when the VAB pressured Nielsen to adjust its audience measurement figures through March 2020.
After defending the accuracy of its in-home panel, Nielsen capitulated in May and acknowledged that a shrinkage in its in-home panel and other issues (ranging from malfunctioning equipment to panel homes that had been unoccupied due to the pandemic and were thus providing no viewership data) affected audience counts. At the time, the measurement firm vowed to return its in-home panel back to its pre-pandemic size while addressing nearly 10,000 homes in its panel set that were identified as having problems.
Still, the networks have charged that Nielsen has not been transparent with them and have not given them enough notice or guidance. Nielsen’s rating system is crucial to the TV industry, providing buy-side and sell-side metrics with which to set rates and plan media against; inaccuracies could translate to hundreds of millions of dollars lost, the VAB has previously charged.
What could happen next
If Nielsen were to lose its accreditation, it would mark an astonishing blow for the firm that has long served as the industry standard for media advertising. But the VAB’s unprecedented ask to the MRC doesn’t come with a clear timeframe—the MRC can act on its own timeline—and it’s unclear whether the MRC will take such drastic action.
Cunningham said that a potential loss of accreditation would force Nielsen to rectify its panel quickly and address the issues that the VAB and its members have been raising for months. “The suspension of accreditation is to put the restoration of this panel as job one, as a top priority,” Cunningham said.
Nielsen, meanwhile, told Adweek in a statement, “We are fully committed to returning to pre-COVID operations and are working closely with and through the MRC to address any outstanding issues and requests and are committed to their process concerning accreditation.”
Update: An MRC spokesperson told Adweek Wednesday afternoon that the organization continues to review Nielsen’s national ratings, and has been “actively pursuing” concerns from its constituency related to those ratings. The organization’s current independent assessment of Nielsen’s national television service remains ongoing, and the MRC plans to meet with its TV committee in the “near future” to make further assessments; currently, the Nielsen service remains accredited.
“We will keep the marketplace informed of any subsequent actions as the situation warrants,” the spokesperson said.
